Following the demise of my Scott carbon frame in Jan, I was left with a large number of bike bits. In the intervening period between building the Scott (2006) and today, the buggers in charge of extracting £££s in exchange for bikes have decided to shake up the market by changing mountain wheel sizes. Twice. First the gross 29" wheels, and now, the more reasonable 27.5" wheels. So my nearly new 26" wheels on the Scott weren't going to fit on a new frame. So I ended up buying a complete new bike: a 27.5" wheeled Trek Remedy 9, and very nice it is too.

But that left me with the problem of a box full of obsolescent, expensive bits and a pair of 26" wheels. Eventually, my eyes alighted upon a second hand 26"-wheeled hardtail frame. Truth be told, I probably don't really need another bike and I don't have enough room left to store another bike. But I did have a box of bike bits and a pair of wheels. It was also a very pretty bike frame. And the equation governing how many bikes to own (Q= N+1 where Q is the target no of bikes to own, and N is the number currently owned) made me realise I had to have it.

All I need to do now is actually ride the thing...

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You can also justify it in that given the state of the roads after the winter and lack of maintenance you always need an additional spare due to potential damage.

Certainly around here there are bigger whole in the tarmac than on any of the off road routes I've done. Hence I was using my MB for recent rides around the local back roads up to Lyneham Banks, (or more honestly because I had gear cable problems on the road bike). When the weather improved (and I replaced the cables) I took my road bike round the same route and had to abort the best down hill run as it was just to dangerous and I would have broken me or the bike.

Mind you by that argument I really should rebuild the bits of my very old broken road bike and an old second hand one I took to bits about 10 year ago with the idea of creating a disposable road bike. But bits take less room in the garage than complete bikes.